Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Kathleen Antonioli / In a world painted black and white, monsters are always evil and they always seek to destroy what is good, with or without reason. However, twentieth-century Catholic novelist François Mauriac, in his Thérèse Desqueyroux, proposes that the matter of monstrosity is not so easily defined. In a mysterious preface to the novel, Mauriac employs a Baudelarian epigraph that brings murkiness to this definition: “O Créateur ! peut-il exister des monstres aux yeux de celui-là seul qui sait pourquoi ils existent, comment ils se sont faits.. ” (13, italics original). Through the words of Baudelaire, Mauriac questions the nature of his protagonist Thérèse, a “semi-empoisonneuse,” and in the process of doing so, revolutionizes the Catholic novel and the role of women in literature. In this paper, I intend to prove that Mauriac’s departure from the typical Catholic novel and its clichéd protagonist brings complexity to feminine representation by analyzing a “monstrous” female protagonist. Through analysis of historical development of the Catholic novel, as well women’s roles (inside and outside of literature) during and after World War I, this paper seeks to demonstrate that François Mauriac’s representation of women is groundbreaking in comparison to literary works at the time. Mauriac dismisses the pious prototype of the Catholic novel and instead choses a dark and “monstrous” woman as his creation. This paper will examine Thérèse’s refusal of societal roles as wife and mother, as well as Mauriac’s tone, in order to demonstrate the revolutionary portrayal of a monster as his protagonist.

Before his death, Michael Jackson arguably was one of the most famous living celebrities to walk the planet. Onstage, on air, and onscreen, he captivated the attention of millions of people around the world, whether because they loved him or loved to hate him. In an attempt to explain his popularity and cultural influence, I analyze certain theoretical and methodological approaches found in recent scholarship on western hagiographic and teratological texts, and apply these theories and methods to selected biographies written on Michael Jackson. By interpreting the biographies in this way, I suggest why saints, monsters, and celebrities have received considerable attention in their respective communities, and demonstrate how public responses to these figures are contextual, constructed, and often contradictory.

Abstract   This essay is analysing the presence of cleaning and grooming in the novels Shakespeare’s Landlord and Dead Until Dark, both by Charlaine Harris. Against the backdrop of teratology, the essay demonstrates how cleaning and grooming are means for the female protagonists Lily and Sookie to get rid of their inner and outer monstrosities. Their respective monstrosity is defined against the definition of monstrosity by David J. Skal in Monster Theory Seven Theses and the need to get rid of monstrosity is discussed against the theories of Julia Kristeva and Mary Douglas.

Pourquoi Jean Arceneaux, Deborah Clifton et David Cheramie – trois poètes francophones louisianais – font-ils le choix de se représenter sous les traits du monstre dans leur poésie ? L’étude comparée des recueils Cris sur le bayou, Suite du loup, A cette heure la louve et Lait à mère met en évidence l’existence d’un espace intertextuel, métaphorisé par les poètes eux mêmes sous les traits du « pays des loups », où les errances de leurs doubles poétiques dessinent les fondations d’un nouveau mythe américain.Dédoublement et enchâssement des différents alter ego de l’auteur en un processus poétique de « schizophrénie linguistique », projection de soi dans une figure monstrueuse à des fins de recolonisation d’un espace textuel devenu non-lieu poétique puis corps de substitution du poète, jeu carnavalesque où le texte devenu palimpseste figure une superposition de masques trahissant l’existence d’un monde littéraire caché, esthétique du louvoiement et prolifération d’une monstruosité formelle, tels sont les artéfacts poétiques mis en place par nos auteurs dans un jeu de stratégie du dire. Fidèles à une forme de pensée clandestine, les recueils donnent ainsi libre cours à une inversion des valeurs sociales, esthétiques et linguistiques, laissant le vide et le silence d’une condition d’aliéné devenir les matériaux d’une entreprise d’exploration mnésique à des fins de réhabilitation du soi.Se définissant dans cette difformité inscrite au cœur du texte, nos poètes semblent avoir réinventé et reconquis une langue française au potentiel performatif décuplé, faisant de cet Autre anglophone redouté, le complice médusé d’un rituel poétique de déconstruction et d’auto-gestation. / Why do Jean Arceneaux, Deborah Clifton and David Cheramie – three francophone poets from Louisiana – choose to represent themselves as the monster in their poetry? The comparative study of their works Cris sur le bayou, Suite du loup, A cette heure, la louve and Lait à mère reveals the existence of a special location in between their different texts the poets themselves imagine as " the wolves' country ", where the wanderings of their poetical doubles draw the bases of a new American myth.The splitting and setting of the different alter ego of the writer in a poetical process of " linguistic schizophrenia ", the throwing of one’s own picture as a monstrous figure in order to recolonize a textual space turned into a poetical non-place before becoming a substitute body for the poet, the carnivalesque game in which the text now a palimpsest represents a superposition of masks that betrays the existence of a hidden literary world, the aesthetic of the wolf-like gait and the proliferation of a formal monstrosity, these are the poetical artifacts used by our writers in a strategy game to express themselves. Thus, keeping to a form of secret thought, their works present inverted social, aesthetic and linguistic values, allowing the emptiness and silent specific to alienation to become the materials to set out for an amnesic exploration in order to rehabilitate one’s own self.As they define themselves by this deformity written down in the texts, our poets seem to have invented and conquered again a French language ten times more powerful that makes of the “Other one” the anglophone they fear, the dumbfounded accomplice of a poetical ritual of deconstruction and self-gestation.

Totalement érigée autour de la question de la transgression, l'œuvre cronenbergienne, en exposant des comportements considérés comme déviants ainsi que des modes de sexualités allant à l'encontre des modèles normatifs propres à la culture mainstream, semble difficilement catégorisable. À la fois à l'intérieur et à l'extérieur du système hollywoodien, le réalisateur de La Mouche joue avec les codes génériques les plus éculés pour en proposer une véritable alternative. De ses débuts dans le cinéma underground, avec des œuvres telles que Stereo et Crimes of the future, à ses films les plus ''grand public'', comme A History of Violence et Les Promesses de l'ombre, le cinéaste a toujours mis à mal les horizons d'attentes de ses spectateurs. La transgression, chez Cronenberg, ne se résume cependant pas à la seule représentation de la violence et de la sexualité. Elle est un élément structurel majeur qui lui permet de garder une certaine singularité tout en évitant la redite. Comme nous le verrons, tout au long de cette étude, David Cronenberg, bien qu'il se soit progressivement détaché du genre du ''body horror'', s'est toujours intéressé aux mêmes thématiques que celles-ci touchent le corps, l'esprit, la famille ou encore la science. En allant jusqu'à adapter des œuvres littéraires jugées inadaptables (Le Festin Nu, Crash et Cosmopolis), le cinéaste a également exposé son désir d'abolir les frontières entre les arts. Mêlant ses obsessions personnelles à celles d'autres artistes, Cronenberg confère à son œuvre un caractère hybride que viennent métaphoriser les innombrables corps mutants qui peuplent ses films. Cette étude sera structurée autour des quatre grandes formes de transgression constitutives de son œuvre : la morale, le corps, le réel et le cinéma. Il s'agira de montrer que la transgression, loin d'être un simple artifice, est la composante essentielle d'une œuvre qui n'a jamais cessé de se déconstruire pour mieux se réinventer. / Entirely built around the issue of transgression, Cronenberg's work, by exposing behaviors considered as deviant, as well as modes of sexuality going against normative models proper to mainstream culture, seems difficult to categorize. Both inside and outside the Hollywood system, the director of The Fly plays with the most hackneyed generic codes to offer a real alternative. From his beginnings in underground cinema, with works such as Stereo and Crimes of the Future, to his most 'mainstream' films, such as Eastern Promises, the filmmaker has always diverted the expectations of its spectators. However, Cronenberg's transgression is not just about portraying violence and sexuality, it is also a major structural element that allows it to keep a certain singularity while avoiding repetition. Although, David Cronenberg gradually detached himself from the genre of "body horror", as we will see throughout this study, he has always been interested in the same themes that affect the body, mind, family or even science. By going so far as to adapt literary works deemed unadaptable (Naked Lunch, Crash and Cosmopolis), the filmmaker also exposed his desire to abolish the boundaries between the arts. Cronenberg gives his work a hybrid character that metaphorize the innumerable mutant bodies that populate his films by mixing his personal obsessions with those of other artists. This study will be structured around the four major forms of transgression that constitute his work: morality, body, reality and cinema. It will be necessary to show that the transgression, far from being a mere artifice, is the essential component of a work that has never ceased to be deconstructed to better reinvent itself.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / A presente dissertação tem como objetivo mostrar como a literatura gótica pode ser atemporal, subvertendo as mentes e conceitos de seus leitores. Partindo do contexto histórico e cultural em que The Monk se inseriu, esse trabalho visa levantar as questões e elementos tão fortemente reprimidos em nossa sociedade desde o final do século XVIII, como as idéias de mal, abjeção e expressão do eu, em um diálogo permanente com a teoria de Michel Foucault, David Punter, Julia Kristeva, entre outros. Desta forma, a análise do romance se dá paralelamente a uma crítica social, visto que a obra gótica tem por um de seus fins denunciar e deslocar a realidade social. Em última instância, será feita a análise algumas personagens do romance e sua respectiva importância na obra / The objective of the present dissertation is to show how gothic literature can be atemporal, subverting the minds and concepts of the readers. Starting from the historical and cultural context The Monk is inserted, this piece of work attempts to raise the issues and elements so strongly repressed in our society since the end of the 18th century, such as the concepts of evil, abjection and expression of the self, in a continuous dialogue with the theory of Michel Foucault, David Punter, Julia Kristeva, among others. This way, the romance is analysed concomitantly with social criticism, considering that gothic literature aims at denouncing and displacing the social reality. Finally, some characters and their respective relevance in the novel will be analysed

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:42:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Bruno Ferres Candiotto.pdf: 21435758 bytes, checksum: fe37f9f4436b27d7dc342a7310e0da57 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / MONSTR. BETWEEN MONSTERS AND APPARATUS is a theoretical and practical, literary, essayistic and imagery experiment based on applying an artistic operator: monstr. . Through this operator the text of the thesis was constructed proposing a self-questioning of the principles that govern the form of a dissertation in which images and words interacts without hierarchy. What emerges in the dissertation as "monstr." refers to the mode of appointing the creation process, while this process happens considering the strangeness of the act of creation, when creation is actually an interdiction of the creation itself. A radical investment in interdisciplinary dissertation led to the effect of this methodological application. Important authors of the theoretical scenario were used in the process we call "monstrification". Among them fundamentally i quote from Vilém Flusser. He and others served not as authority, but as partners who enter into a dialogue under the proposed methodology. A glossary was built to explain the terms of the text. This glossary aims at bringing the reader closer of the epistemology "monstr." which was used throughout the dissertation extending the theoretical horizons of the reader. The images produced by the "manipulation" of photographs, aims at not to illustrate the text, but to enable a dialogue with it. It suggests a dive in the deep water; a sensory and abysmal depths. All photographs displayed here are nothing more than self-portraits produced by the artistic operator, which exposes them through an admittedly nonlinear aesthetic, emphasizing hybrid characteristics and unusual "plurality" of himself. Actually these photographs have been manipulated and were set to "manipulate" and to be manipulated, causing reflections not only about the "visual" but also about the "sensory" and the myriad of possibilities that this dialectic allows. / MONSTR. ENTRE MONSTROS E APARELHOS é um experimento teórico e prático, literário, ensaístico e imagético baseado na aplicação de um operador artístico: monstr. . Por meio desse operador construiu-se o texto da dissertação proposto como autoquestionamento dos próprios princípios que regem a forma de uma dissertação em que a imagem e a palavra interagem sem hierarquia. Aquilo que na dissertação surge como monstr. refere-se ao modo de nomear o processo de criação, enquanto esse processo se dá tendo em vista a estranheza do próprio ato de criar quando a criação é, na verdade, interdição da própria criação. Um investimento radical na interdisciplinaridade provocou a dissertação como efeito dessa aplicação metodológica. Autores importantes do cenário teórico foram usados dentro do processo que chamamos aqui de monstrificação . Entre eles cito fundamentalmente Vilém Flusser. Ele e outros servem não como autoridade, mas como parceiros que entram em diálogo nos termos da metodologia proposta. Um glossário foi construído para explicitar os termos do texto, esse glossário visa aproximar o leitor da epistemologia monstr. que foi usada ao longo da dissertação ampliando os horizontes teóricos do leitor. As imagens produzidas por manipulação de imagens, fotografias, visam não a ilustração do texto, mas um diálogo com ele. Sugerem um mergulho em águas profundas; profundeza sensorial e abismal. Todas as fotografias aqui expostas nada mais são do que auto-retratos produzidas pelo operador artístico, que as expõe por meio de um estética assumidamente não linear, enfatizando características híbridas e pluralidade incomum, próprias de si mesmo. Tratam-se na verdade de imagens manipuladas, programadas para manipularem por meio delas mesmas, e que permitem serem manipuladas, provocando reflexões não somente acerca do visual , mas também do sensorial e da miríade de possibilidades que essa dialética permite.

Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2016-06-22T13:23:45Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 1294009 bytes, checksum: 10450e213eb5804e1ffb8903bd34aedd (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-22T13:23:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 1294009 bytes, checksum: 10450e213eb5804e1ffb8903bd34aedd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-07-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This research has as objective to analyze Frankenstein (1818), written by the English writer Mary Shelley (1797-1851), from a perspective of the concept of monstrosity allied to the feminist criticism, based on Gilmore (2003), Cawson (1995), Fay (1998), Gilbert & Gubar (1984), among others. Published in 1818, Frankenstein remains attractive, among other points, due to the social critic that its lines transpires when decentralizes the narrative motif out of haunted castles, family curses and ghosts that torments the characters, as the English traditional gothic novels did. Frankenstein begins a new period of the gothic novels centering the focus on the psychological limits of its characters; exploring the monstrosities from the attitudes and intentionality as a reflex of the society from the historical period that the novel is product. The fiction of Mary Shelley overflows the feminine experience originated from the contact with a society haunted for the masculine domination. Thus, our analysis is centered on the otherness of Victor Frankenstein‘s Creature as a representation for the feminine condition of its time. / Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo analisar Frankenstein (1818), da escritora inglesa Mary Shelley (1797-1851), sob uma perspectiva do conceito de monstruosidade aliada à crítica feminista, tomando como base os estudos de Gilmore (2003), Cawson (1995), Fay (1998), Gilbert e Gubar (1984), dentre outros. Publicado em 1818, Frankenstein permanece atraente, entre tantos pontos, pela crítica social que suas linhas transpiram ao decentralizar o foco da narrativa de castelos assombrados, maldições de família e fantasmas que atormentam os personagens, como havia se solidificado os romances góticos ingleses. Frankenstein inaugura uma nova fase do gótico de romances centrado nos limites psicológicos de seus personagens; explora as monstruosidades das atitudes e das intencionalidades como reflexo da sociedade do período do qual o romance é produto. A ficção de Shelley transborda a experiência feminina advinda do contato com uma sociedade assombrada pela dominação masculina. Assim, nossa análise está centrada na construção da alteridade da Criatura de Victor Frankenstein como representação da condição feminina da época em o romance foi escrito.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / A presente dissertação tem como objetivo mostrar como a literatura gótica pode ser atemporal, subvertendo as mentes e conceitos de seus leitores. Partindo do contexto histórico e cultural em que The Monk se inseriu, esse trabalho visa levantar as questões e elementos tão fortemente reprimidos em nossa sociedade desde o final do século XVIII, como as idéias de mal, abjeção e expressão do eu, em um diálogo permanente com a teoria de Michel Foucault, David Punter, Julia Kristeva, entre outros. Desta forma, a análise do romance se dá paralelamente a uma crítica social, visto que a obra gótica tem por um de seus fins denunciar e deslocar a realidade social. Em última instância, será feita a análise algumas personagens do romance e sua respectiva importância na obra / The objective of the present dissertation is to show how gothic literature can be atemporal, subverting the minds and concepts of the readers. Starting from the historical and cultural context The Monk is inserted, this piece of work attempts to raise the issues and elements so strongly repressed in our society since the end of the 18th century, such as the concepts of evil, abjection and expression of the self, in a continuous dialogue with the theory of Michel Foucault, David Punter, Julia Kristeva, among others. This way, the romance is analysed concomitantly with social criticism, considering that gothic literature aims at denouncing and displacing the social reality. Finally, some characters and their respective relevance in the novel will be analysed

This thesis uses four works by the contemporary Canadian poet Anne Carson (born 1950) to argue that it is in the embracing of failure and difficulty that modern poetics may negotiate formal erosion and the limits of language. The introduction addresses Carson’s divisive reputation, and uses two separate criticisms of her poetic skill to delineate her liminal position in the modern poetic landscape, and therefore demonstrate her potential as a valuable framework for discussing innovative form. Via an examination of the criticisms of Robert Potts and David Solway, I argue that Carson is neither high priestess of postmodernism nor a collagist of poorly produced forms. This illuminates two points: one, that she occupies a space outside several modern ideologies of poetic authenticity, expression and form, and two, that this position can be effectively used to interrogate those ideologies and investigate new possibilities for poetic creativity. In Chapter 1, Nox, Carson’s elegy for her brother Michael, is argued to experiment with traditional elegy form – but not in a mode that wholly follows Jahan Ramazani’s famous framing of 20th century elegy form as traumatically fractured. Nox is shown not to be merely subversive, but also interrogative of its own formal tradition, embracing the inherent contradiction within elegy: that absence could be rendered as presence, that a living, flawed language could make the dead speak. From this contradiction, I argue, Nox creates a solution: it occupies a position of formal non-forming, a return to the state of poesis, refusing to emerge as a completed poem or retreat into fragmentation but instead occupying a liminal space of continual creation. In the second chapter, this preoccupation with elegy’s paradox is shown to be part of a greater theme within Carson’s work. The failures of language in Carson are elucidated with reference to the sceptical 19th-century theorist Fritz Mauthner. Mauthner is argued to be the best theorist for the thesis’s framework because of his belief in the possibilities of language’s resurrection as a valid communicative medium. Through three texts, “By Chance The Cycladic People”, The Glass Essay and Just For The Thrill, Carson’s interrogation of this hope is shown to produce creativity from difficulty, creating monstrous form-combinations to render the silence beyond language’s limits as poetically productive. Carson’s texts, in their struggle with failure and their obsessive doubt, can be used to construct several means of negotiating the limits of form and the inherent fallibility of language. The conflict between the drive for authentic expression and the perceived failure of expressive mediums is one of the defining features of both Carson’s work and modern poetry in general. However, it is by inhabiting and challenging the fraught areas at the edge of meaning that poetry of the 21st century can, in the words of Carson’s influence Samuel Beckett, try again, fail again, fail better. Synopsis: The Traitor’s Symphony is an experimental novel in three voices, set in an unspecified totalitarian state known only as the Regime at some point in the twentieth century. It follows the career of David, a young composer who rises from tortured outcast to celebrated Regime talent through scheming, moral ambiguity, and a deal with the Professor, a translator and populist radio pundit. David trades the sexual attentions of Dion, a beautiful but brain-damaged boy, for the Professor’s help in rising through the ranks of the Regime’s musical system. The voices of the Professor and his doctor wife Anne, who have just lost their newborn son, alternate with David’s as the bargain binds them together in disaster. The narrative is inspired by the lives of collaborationist composers in various 20th century states, including Dmitri Shostakovich and Carl Orff, but is not focussed on any one figure. Instead, it takes various elements of their experience - the state apparatus of approval, the minute observation of ‘doctrine’ in musical content, and the humiliation and blacklisting of composers who did not produce acceptable content - as the starting point for a narrative exploring the complex relationship between art, artists and the modern totalitarian state. Research in this area was shaped by Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise: listening to the twentieth century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007) and the work of Michael Kater, most notably Composers of the Nazi era: eight portraits (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), and supplemented by archival work in the Stasimuseum and Bundesbeauftragten in Berlin. More broadly, the novel focusses on the difficulties of grief, love and survival in totalitarian environments. Its setting, the Regime, was created by combining elements of daily life under the Stalinist Terror, The Democratic Republic Of North Korea, and Nazi and Stasi Germany, drawing on sources including Anna Akhmatova’s poetry and Chol-Hwan Kang’s The Aquariums Of Pyongyang (New York: Basic Books, 2001). The Regime’s embedded paranoia, hyper-vigilance, rigorous propaganda, regulated femininity, cult-like leader worship and brutal reprisal for non-conforming citizens are constructed from these historical precedents. Each of the three voices is stylised as a poetic form, as a method of expressing the repression of the individual and the culture of fear in the Regime’s system. This formal dimension draws on modernist literature in its use of language as expression of identity, but also on Wittgensteinian doubt that true communication could ever exist between such personal webs of meaning. Both David and Anne must actively suppress their private pain, he the agony of torture and burden of being labelled a traitor, she the disorienting grief of her son’s death and the loss of her husband’s love. Their inner emotional states are reflected in the forms of their vocals: David’s fractured voice, with its distressed percussive rhythm, is the voice of a musician physically and mentally smashed, while Anne’s blank, frantic segments express the dislocation of her foreignness and the gulf that grief has created in her marriage. The Professor, in contrast, begins the novel in supreme command of language, with brief breaks into sensual chaos as the only manifestation of his hidden mourning. The vocal shifts reflect and form the narrative progression.